I was trying to compile e2fsprogs 1.37 on my powerpc linux (PowerMac 7500 running Linux 2.4.31) and kept getting this error saying ld could not find the iconv library, even though I had just built it. Eventually I realized it might be looking for a static library, which the iconv configure doesn't do by default, so I rebuilt libiconv with the --enable-static option, and then e2fsprogs compiled without errors.
June 2005